[MUD-Dev] Wild west (was Guilds & Politics)

[JC Lawrence]

On Wed, 31 Dec 1997 13:42:32 PST8PDT 
Greg Munt<greg at uni-corn.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, 31 Dec 1997, Ola Fosheim Grstad wrote:

> I don't accept this. People connect to a particular system by
> choice. You might make an analogy to employees of a business:

>   The company has an owner. The owner has the ultimate authority in
> all matters relating to the company.

>   Employees work for the company by choice. They may, at any time,
> cease employment for the company. (Ignoring the economic concerns of
> the employee.)

>   The owner of the company has "every right to do with it as they
> please" (within the boundaries of the law) - if the employee does
> not accept this, they may leave the company.

The test case of course occurred with a friend of the family who ran a
successful business employing some 200+ people.  One day the owner
simply decided that he was bored with being a business owner, wanted
to retire, and had enough personal wealth to last the rest of his
life.  The result was that he mailed pink slips (termination of
employment notices) to the entire workforce post dated two months, and
60 days later locked the doors, sold all the equipment (desks,
machines etc) to a local auction house, and went home.

Good Thing?  Bad Thing?  Unimportant.  The importance is that it was
his company, and he did with it as he would.

> The analogy falls short, where the legal responsibilities of the
> owner are concerned. The owner of the company may not terminate an
> employee's employment with the company, because of personal enmity,
> for example.

Technically true, but false in practice even in countries with strong
enforced laws to that effect.  The employee still ends up fired, its
just that the stated reason is different, or that extra effort is
expended to create a legally supportable reason for terminating the
employee.  Nothing has actually really changed, its just made the
stakes a bit higher and altered the presentation.

Laws are often seen as simple solutions.  Too rarely are they seen as
predatory forces on a society, against which the society and its
members will evollve.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
                                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
----------(*)                        Internet: jc.lawrence at sun.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...